Thor possessed tremendous strength.
He was unquestionably the strongest Giant in all of Elbaph when it came to raw power.
Even Harald was far weaker than his own son in that regard.
But for a warrior of Elbaph, strength alone was not enough.
Harald had just demonstrated that lesson to Thor firsthand.
Thor, however, was about to teach his father an equally important lesson.
Who cared about all that fancy force-dissipation martial arts nonsense?
He was going all-in on strength like Yujiro Hanma.
Demon Back—activate!
Thor’s head had been smashed into the ground, leaving a massive crater in Valhalla’s arena.
But at the same time, both of his hands had wrapped firmly around Harald’s ankles.
‘Not good!’
By the time Harald realized something was wrong, it was already too late.
“OOOOOH!”
Thor let out a furious battle cry.
In a single motion, he sprang upright.
Harald, all sixty meters of him, was effortlessly lifted into the air.
And then— the giant windmill began!
Thor spun like an enormous top, swinging Harald—who stood more than twice his height—around and around at terrifying speed.
This was a finishing move Thor had learned from Charlotte Linlin.
He certainly hadn’t forgotten how Linlin had accidentally flung him halfway across Elbaph when he was little.
Today, his father could experience it for himself.
“Bye-bye, Dad! Off you go!”
“Thor—you—!”
Harald didn’t even get to finish his sentence.
Thor released his grip.
Whoosh!
Harald instantly became a star in the distant sky.
Within moments, he vanished from sight.
“Huh?!”
Every Giant present stared in stunned silence.
What the hell had just happened?
King Harald had been turned into a shooting star?
Was the duel…
over just like that?
“Hahahaha!”
Rocks couldn’t stop himself from laughing.
“That brat is hilarious! He actually threw his own father away!”
“Shiki, go help me find my old friend. Don’t let Harald fall into the sea and become fish food.”
“I’ll find him, but you’d better prepare a few extra barrels of good booze for me.”
“No problem.”
With the power of the Float-Float Fruit, Golden Lion Shiki didn’t need much time or effort to bring Harald back.
In truth, Harald would have returned to Elbaph quickly even without Shiki’s help.
Harald knew perfectly well that this enormous Sea King was Thor’s tamed pet.
He said nothing.
He simply sat atop Jörmungandr’s head with his arms folded, silently sulking.
The moment Harald returned to Elbaph, he drove one enormous fist straight into Thor’s head.
“You bastard son! You actually used such a dirty trick just to win?!”
“Hehe! Dad, that was the triumph of martial arts.”
Thor grinned while clutching his aching head.
No matter how anyone looked at it, every Giant in Elbaph had witnessed Thor throw Harald completely out of the arena.
Leaving Valhalla meant losing the duel.
Thor had won.
“You bastard son!”
Harald angrily raised his fist to hit Thor again.
Thor, however, ran faster than a rabbit and immediately hid behind Ida.
“Forget it…”
Harald had been furious enough that his anger had finally burned itself out.
“Thor, come here. And Rocks, you bastard, get over here too!”
As both the king of Elbaph and Thor’s father, Harald needed to have a proper conversation with the two of them.
At the drinking table sat Harald, drinking gloomily; Rocks, lounging with one leg crossed over the other and looking immensely pleased with himself; and Thor, pretending he knew absolutely nothing.
After a moment, Harald finally spoke.
“Rocks, my son can join your pirate crew. But I have one condition.”
“Hohoho? Let’s hear it.”
“You are not allowed to drag Elbaph into your plans.”
Thor choosing to venture out to sea was his own decision.
Harald could not allow the entire kingdom of Elbaph to pay the price for one person’s actions.
“Fine! I agree.”
Rocks had no intention of going to war with the World Government just yet.
He still needed to recruit more people and accumulate greater strength.
By the time he was ready, perhaps that naive idiot Harald would finally have seen the World Government’s true nature and chosen to stand beside him.
“Thor, I hope you never forget who you are.”
“You are a prince of Elbaph, and one day you will become its king.”
“The fate of this country and our people will be in your hands.”
Hearing Harald’s earnest warning, Thor couldn’t bring himself to crush the man’s hopes.
He could only nod.
“I know, Dad. I won’t bring trouble to Elbaph.”
“Fine. That’s settled.”
Harald waved Thor and Rocks away.
Then he continued drinking alone in a foul mood.
…
About a week later, in Elbaph’s Underworld, an enormous bone-covered ship appeared before everyone.
“That ship is huge!”
The enormous vessel before them looked to be roughly a thousand meters long.
Even if its crew consisted entirely of Giants, it could easily accommodate more than a hundred of them.
It was an absolute behemoth.
“It’s called the Naglfar. I spent three years preparing this ship.”
Standing before the Naglfar, Thor spoke with barely concealed excitement.
At last, it was time to set sail.
Naglfar.
In Norse mythology, it was a colossal ship associated with the dead.
During Ragnarök, it carried Giants, the dead, and monsters such as Fenrir and Jörmungandr to the battlefield of Vígríðr for the final war against the gods of Asgard.
Over the years, Thor and Loki had collected countless beast bones from the Underworld.
Those bones now decorated the enormous vessel, which had been constructed from the wood of the Treasure Tree Adam.
Mounted at the bow was the colossal skull of a Sea King Thor had personally hunted.
From a distance, the ship resembled an enormous skeletal beast— a vessel piloted by death itself, sailing into the world to bring destruction.
“Well, Prince Thor? Not bad craftsmanship from us brothers, right?”
“Brok, Sindri, thank you.”
After thanking the two Giant blacksmiths, Thor extended an invitation.
“Would the two of you be interested in boarding the Naglfar and serving as my shipwrights and blacksmiths?”
“Hahaha! We’d be delighted.”
Brok and Sindri readily accepted.
The brothers also wanted to see the outside world.
They wanted to learn human craftsmanship and forge even greater weapons for Prince Thor.
Next came the crew.
Elbaph still had quite a few warriors who had once belonged to the Giant Warrior Pirates.
Many were willing to follow Thor out to sea.
These veteran warriors possessed extensive sailing experience, making them exactly the sort of crew Thor needed.
Naturally, he accepted every one of them.
In only a few days, Thor recruited more than thirty crew members.
Working together, they loaded massive quantities of supplies aboard the Naglfar.
Everything was ready for departure.
“Hey, brat! You’re a captain now too. Have you decided what you’re going to call your pirate crew?”
Thor joining the Rocks Pirates didn’t mean he would actually board Rocks’s own ship.
Thor was already twenty-five meters tall and would only continue growing.
Rocks’s ship quite literally couldn’t accommodate him.
So Thor formed a pirate crew of his own and joined the larger pirate fleet under Rocks’s banner.
Since he was going to sea as a pirate, his crew naturally needed a suitably impressive name.
“The Viking Pirates.”
Thor had settled on the name long ago.
Norse mythology had its origins in the legends of the Vikings.
And the Vikings themselves were among history’s most iconic seafaring raiders.
Even now, when people thought of Vikings, classic pirate imagery immediately came to mind.
So for Thor’s pirate crew— the name was a perfect fit.